The Pirate Bay Shuts Down After Police Raid

File-sharing website The Pirate Bay has shut down after a police raid. A Costa Rica-hosted website has since appeared online to mimic the site, but the torrents are still unavailable. It could be a sign that illegal downloading is finally being clamped down on.

The Swedish police raided a server room allegedly owned by The Pirate Bay, forcing the site offline. Computers and servers were reportedly seized due to the company’s copyright infringements, according to Fredrik Ingblad, a prosecutor usually linked to file-sharing cases. The taking of the equipment means that the torrents are lost, so the Costa Rican site is not able to do anything.

The Pirate Bay is one of the oldest torrent sites on the internet, and has been at the forefront of a number of complaints around the world. In the United Kingdom, it was one of the first to be blocked by various Internet service providers (ISPs) after court orders. However, individuals have found other ways around accessing the websites for their downloading preferences.

Governments have attempted to tackle the problem of illegal downloading. However, it is unusual for a company to be tackled directly. According to Ingblad, the raid took place on Tuesday and a number of forensic experts were working with the police. While there are no official confirmations of arrests, there is reportedly one man detained connected to the raid.

The Pirate Bay has shut down after the police raid, but it may not be all that surprising for many. One of the site’s original creators, Fredrik Neij, was arrested just last month. He was between the Thailand and Laos border, and arrested for sharing material that was copyrighted. The charge for that is from five years ago. Co-founder Peter Sunde was also arrested earlier this year for his position in the company.

Fottfrid Svartholm has also been arrested. He was sentenced to a prison sentence of three and a half years for his involvement in the 2012 hacking of an American company.

The U.K. was not the first country to block access to The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. The Dutch courts also attempted to block access, and last week a French court also sent out an order to ban the site. Now, Google has even removed third-party apps from its Play Store that were designed to make it possible to access the site.

It has been difficult to force the site to shut down. It runs on virtual servers, which prevents hosting companies from closing it down. One comment from a Reddit user says that Swedish police got the front-end load balancer, and that the site could make a comeback afterwards. This could be a problem with the co-founders convicted, but there are others who may take up the operation. The site has proven to be viable since so many individuals want to use it for access to torrents.

This does not completely stop the file-sharing industry, either. There are plenty of other sites that offer the ability for people to download illegally. However, for now, one site is out of the running as The Pirate Bay shuts down after the Swedish police raid.